Page 75 of Dead Girl Running

“Okay.” He held up his hands. “PMS, much?”

Mara put her hands on her hips.“Really?”

Sheri Jean said, “Your job’s on the line, mister.”

Kellen stepped up to him, nose to nose. “Get. Out.”

He marched away, trailing tatters of offended dignity. But he didn’t get sympathy, and he didn’t put down his drink.

Kellen hoped she hadn’t made a mistake. Nils Brooks wanted to keep his suspects close. But while the events of the past several days had convinced her Nils Brooks told her the truth about the Yearning Sands Resort smuggling depot, and probably the truth about the Librarian, she still wasn’t convinced that Nils Brooks was telling the truth abouthimself. And that increased her apprehension and her suspicions…about everyone.

Or maybe she was simply sleep deprived.

Frances smiled after Chad Griffin’s retreating figure. “You know, Kellen, I didn’t know if I liked you before, but you’re getting to be almost human.”

Murders. Smuggling. Obnoxious men. Handsome men. Missing law enforcement. A fussy generator. A quirky communications system. Sure. The whole equation added up to a much more likable Kellen Adams. “Thanks,” Kellen said.

“What’s in the package?” Sheri Jean asked.

Kellen poked at the artistically arranged mounds of tangerines, gold-foil-wrapped pears and apples and plums. “It’s cold.”

“They refrigerated the fruit,” Sheri Jean answered.

“You’re not supposed to refrigerate bananas.” Kellen pulled them off the top and started taking the array of fruit apart, searching for the card. “Are you sure it’s for me?”

“The delivery woman specifically said it was for Kellen Adams,” Frances said. “That is you, isn’t it?”

Mostly.“I can’t eat it all.” Kellen didn’t want to eat any of it. A mystery gift made her remember that disembodied head floating outside Nils’s window, made her think about the Librarian and the people who died in agony, their hands cut from their bodies, their pleas for help unheard. In this place, at this time, she had to wonder if someone with less than honorable intentions had sent this.

“Let’s put it out for the guests!” Sheri Jean found a tray of dried chocolate-dipped apricots and a tin of chocolate-covered cherries and made a nummy sound.

Kellen looked up at the gathering crowd: Sheri Jean and her receptionists, Mara and her spa workers, the newlyweds and the Shivering Sherlocks. She could hardly say she feared poison or some other mischief. Unless she wanted to explain herself, and she did not, that could be construed as paranoia. In fact, it mightbeparanoia. “Help yourselves,” she said and stepped back.

Frances slid the foil off a ripe pear and took a bite, and her eyes slid closed in unadulterated pleasure.

Mara took the tray of chocolate-dipped glazed apricots and danced around to the employees and guests, offering and teasing.

Carson Lennex arrived and watched from the outskirts, arms crossed over his manly chest and a slight, charming smile lifting his lips.

Chad Griffin hid in the lobby bar and sulked.

As the staff and guests passed the chocolate-covered fruits, the tight knot of worry inside Kellen relaxed. This was the kind of treat the troops had loved receiving overseas, luxurious tidbits that reminded them of home and holidays—and so far, no one had dropped dead.

Frances ran her finger around the edge of the bowl. “I wonder if this is really a Japanese Awaji piece. If it is, you’ve got a secret admirer with expensive taste.”

The whole secret admirer thing gave Kellen the willies. “I hate that crackle glaze.” The decorative bowls at the Greenleaf mansion had sparkled with that glaze, and Erin and Gregory had both adored them. Looking back, Kellen thought it was because they enjoyed the idea of something that was prebroken. Like them. “You take it,” she told Frances.

“Really? Okay, I will. Thank you!”

Kellen went back to work unpacking the fruit. Tiny tangerines with their zipper skin smelled like sunshine, summer and citrus. The prickly skin of a fresh pineapple gave off the scent of faraway tropical plantations. Only people who lived where the continual rain bleached the world gray could understand. Kellen lifted one of the last tangerines to her nose, took a long sniff—and something long and slim and alive and colorful slithered out of the bowl.

Guests squeaked and screamed and scattered.

By some trick of levitation, Kellen found herself ten feet back from where she’d been.

The snake, ten inches long, with black, gray and red stripes running the length of its body, slid off the table and onto the floor. It moved rapidly across the cool marble toward the front door.

Sheri Jean moved with intelligence and speed. She dumped the last of the fruit out of the bowl and inverted it over the snake, stopping its escape and the burgeoning panic. “It’s nothing more than a garter snake,” she announced in a loud, firm voice. Then more quietly she said, “Although I’ve never seen one like that.”

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